


If You Hated It, Then You Should Have Put a Ring on It

by conceptofzero



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-09
Updated: 2011-11-09
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:03:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofzero/pseuds/conceptofzero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a night of heavy drinking, Snowman wakes up to a massive hangover, an unfortunate bed-mate, and some very ill-advised new jewelry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Hated It, Then You Should Have Put a Ring on It

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round One of the Homestuck Shipping Olympics. The original posted version was much shorter due to a word-count limit. This version contains a lot of that fic, but with some extra development and a change of scenery.

Her head is splitting when she wakes up. It's the very first thing she's aware of, that awful pulsing sensation right between her eyes. It feels like her head is about to crack right open and spill out her brains onto the pillow beneath her head. Snowman keeps her eyes shut as she breathes in and out very still, willing the pain to go away.

It does so, slowly and cautiously, and as her higher brain functions begin to come back online, she becomes aware of a few things almost simultaneously. Snowman is not in her bed. There is someone sleeping beside her, head nestled between her breasts, snoring like a rusty chainsaw. She's also naked and sore from what must have been incredibly vigorous sex. Also, her hangover may be the worst she has ever suffered through. Snowman remembers martinis, and later metropolitans and red wine, and near the end of her memory, she becomes quite certain she began drinking gin without a mixer.

She lays there a moment longer, not entirely certain she wants to wake up and find who exactly it is she's bedded. It would be simple to phase out and into her room at the mansion. Except there's a chance they would know, and she wouldn't, and that's just unacceptable. And to be honest, she wants to know exactly who it is snoring like some sort of heavy machinery on her chest.

Snowman sighs softly, and cracks open an eye. The room is bright, and garish, lush pink and lurid red. There appears to be a heart-shaped tub to the right, and a large puddle of water on the floor. For one horrifying moment, she thinks she's in Hearts Boxcars room, but the figure nestled against her is far too small.

The figure nestled against her is familiarly small. He nuzzles her right breast, murmuring in his sleep. Snowman can't move fast enough, shoving Slick off of her chest and clawing the blankets around her. Slick doesn't immediately wake up. Instead, the little bastard stays sprawled out over his side of the bed, completely naked, and smelling like he bathed in his drinks instead of swallowing them. Snowman makes a face. Wonderful. Spades Slick. This is a new low.

She gathers the blankets around her and slips out of the bed, looking around for her things. Maybe she can get out of here before Slick wakes up. He smells like a brewery, so there's a chance that maybe, just maybe, he won't remember either. Snowman smells her own arm and wrinkles her nose. She also stinks like booze. Even more wonderful.

Her coat is near the door. The rest of her things are scattered everywhere, along with an unsightly number of white roses. Snowman has no idea why there are so many roses here, or where the hell her bra has gotten off to. She slips her dress on, and grabs her coat, scowling when she sees that Slick's torn the buttons off of it. That son of a bitch.

It's only as she fiddles with the torn threads does she notice the flash of gold on her hand. Her blood goes cold in her veins, some part of her hind brain figuring this out long before the rest of her puts it together. There's a ring on her hand, a delicate gold band with a disgustingly large diamond right in the middle of it.

Her eyes slide off of it and onto the heart-shaped tub, which seems to have been filled with champagne. No wonder they both reek of alcohol if they were bathing in that last night. This thought runs briefly through her mind, as if attempting to distract her from the obvious and horrifying conclusion of where she is. It's a poor distraction and her mind comes up with the word: honeymoon suite. She just woke up, naked, well-fucked, in a honeymoon suite, with a ring on her hand, and no memory of the night before.

Snowman walks over to the bed, moving in a slightly jerky fashion. She leans down and slaps Slick across the face twice, one right after the other. His snoring comes to a sudden halt as he flails awake, sitting up and nearly knocking his head into hers. Slick squints as he looks around, "Who the fuck did that- you!" He goes scrambling backwards, trying to grab onto his weapons. They're nowhere near him though, and it's easy to grab onto him, to slam him down against the mattress.

"Slick, you've got thirty seconds to explain what the fuck happened here," she growls at him, refusing to let him get away, "Or I make your death slow and painful."

"I don't know what you're fucking talking about! Get off of me!" Slick slowly seems to realize that there's a lot more wrong here besides just Snowman. His eyes look around her, and the confusion on his face isn't fake. Slick's never been good at lying, and he sure as hell hasn't learned how to now. "Where the fuck are we? Did Boxcars stick us in here? Where's that fucking asshole?"

He's not going to be of any use. Snowman lets go of him, stalking around the room and trying to find something useful. She roots through the drawers of the nearby table to see if there's anything there. It's a mess, cluttered with more flowers, a handful of jewelry and shattered glass, and an almost pornographic series of photomaton pictures staring herself and Slick that make her shudder softly, but absolutely no paper.

Meanwhile, on the bed, Slick's slowly having his own epiphany, putting together the clues from last night far slower than she did. "What the fuck is even going on here? The last thing I remember, I was getting drunk- did we fuck?"

"Will you shut up? My head's aching." Snowman approaches the empty bottles of champagne on the floor, prodding them to see if there's anything folded up and hidden among them. There's only a bloody knife that Snowman gingerly picks up and tosses on the bed with Slick.

"We fucked." The smugness creeps into his tone. Of course he'd feel proud of this. He's not going to be so pleased when he figures out this was more than an awkward one-night stand. Slick picks up the knife, rubbing the dried blood off on the sheets. "You loved it, didn't you? You're just hanging around hoping it'll happen again."

"Shut up Slick," she repeats, really not wanting to get into it. There's nothing else among the bottles, just stains on the carpet and broken corks. Snowman straightens up and looks around again, noticing for the first time that the door looks like it was kicked in. She starts keeping mental count of the number of potential crimes they may have committed while blitzed.

Snowman finds her bra with Slick's things and she makes a face, yanking it out. She'd turns her back on Slick and does her best to slide it on without taking off her dress. Snowman's prepared for Slick's comment, but it still raises her hackles when he finally says it. "There's no need to be shy. It's not like I didn't see it all last night."

"Some of us have class," she snipes back, pointedly looking at him. He's not even bothering to cover himself up. Snowman knows she must have been out of her mind to have actually fucked him. Thought about it, sure, she's thought about it. She's also thought about murdering him, feeling him die as her hand squeezes his throat hard enough to break the shell. Yet here he is, unmarked and all too smug for his own good. She goes back to searching for the licence.

"Don't waste your time looking around for it.” The bastard lounges in bed, just watching Snowman with a shit-eating grin on his face. “You’re not going to find your dignity hanging around here.”

“I’m looking for the marriage licence.” Maybe if he was anyone else, she would try to break this to him gently, but he’s Slick and he’s an asshole so she just drops the bombshell without blinking.

“What?” The words don’t sink in right away. And though she should keep looking, she takes a moment to watch as the horror finally gets through his thick skull, his eyes sliding around the room, and to the ring on her hand, and finally to the gold band on his own finger. For a moment, it looks like his eyes will just pop out of his skull, and his face all draws back into an expression of horror that should not nearly be so satisfying, but is. “What?!”

“Put on some clothes and help me look,” she orders, picking up his clothes and chucking them at Slick. His coat smacks him right in the face, and the pants quickly follow. She debates on throwing his shoes and decides to leave them be. There’s no point in sending his shirt over, it’s been utterly ripped to shreds. That makes her feel a little better about her coat.

Slick gets dressed haphazardly, cramming his legs and arms into his clothes and making a beeline right for her. “What the fuck happened here?!”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked you,” Snowman points out, taking a step back from him. She’s had more than enough physical contact with him for one lifetime. Being on the other side of the planet probably won’t be enough distance from Slick, but that will have to wait until she figures out what happened, and more importantly, who the hell even married them.

"You're telling me that we both don't remember? Bullshit!" She ignores him for the moment, her eyes fixing on the all too familiar stain by the door. Snowman heads towards it, prodding at the rusty coloured carpet. It's already set in. "Hey, I'm fucking talking to you!"

"Yes, I know. It's very hard to tune out your shrill voice," Snowman's snappish, but she's still got a hangover and she's thirsty. She stands up and opens the door. As she expected, there's a body lying on the carpet. It seems a corpse makes a very efficient do-not-disturb sign. "Slick, why did you kill the bellhop?"

"What?" Slick glances around her. He frowns, clearly struggling to remember. Those white eyes of his snap wide as he remembers something front last night. Snowman feels irritated that his brain's caught up faster than hers. "This fucker! I came up the stairs with more champagne and he was standing right in the doorway, staring at you in the tub-" He stops and looks at her. It takes her a moment to realize that he's remembering what she looks like naked and she gives him a smack. "Fuck! You bitch-"

"I don't have time for this." She shuts the door on the body and turns around. Of course, Slick's right up in her space, far too close for comfort and itching for a fight. Her body's still feeling the affects of last night, and while she can't remember what the hell possessed her to wed and bed him, her body makes it pretty clear that it would be happy to repeat that performance. Snowman shoves him away from her and walks past Slick, in no mood to repeat whatever madness drove them to this. "I'm getting my things, we're finding that certificate and then we're going to the courthouse to get an annulment."

She finds an unbroken glass and fills it with water from the water basin, washing away the foul taste in her mouth. Slick follows her, clearly still pissed about the slap and the shove, since he grabs her arm and yanks her around to face him. "An annulment?"

"Yes." She yanks her hand out of his grip, taking another sip of lukewarm water before spitting it down the sink. "As soon as feasibly possible. I'd rather not be married to you any longer than I absolutely must be. Why, do you have a problem with that?"

"That's fucking fine with me, the faster you're out of my fucking life, the better off I'll be." Still, he stays too close to her for comfort, standing between Snowman and the door. "But see, what I'm fucking curious about is how you're keeping so cool about this. I'm starting to think you remember more than you're letting on, and that this is part of your fucking plan-"

"My 'fucking' plan?" She parrots his words at him, sounding pissed, "And what exactly is this plan? What do I gain from marrying my worst enemy and having that annulled immediately after waking up?"

"I don't fucking know, but I know you, and you've got an angle! Maybe you're trying to weasel in on some of my fucking money-" He gets that far before she slaps him as hard as she can. Slick staggers to the side, clutching his face. He's bleeding a little, and that's nowhere near enough blood for her taste. "You bitch!"

Snowman smacks the hand away from his face, grabbing him by the throat, and slamming Slick up against the bathroom wall. Her hand tightens, watching carefully as his breathing gets shallow. "If I wanted your money, I'd rob your casino. But there is nothing you have that I want. And if you suggest that again, I'll save myself the trouble of getting an annulment and settle for being a widow."

"Y'need a reason for an annulment. Lemme give you a real good one." Slick's hand comes up with a knife and she's force to let go of his throat to catch it, and then to grab the other one. He pushes off the wall and they end up stepping back, Snowman bumping right against the counter. Slick's right up against her, snarling at her even as she twists the blades out of his hands. "I don't remember much of last night, but I remember how fucking eager you were to get your hands on me while you were in that tub."

It seems he was eager too, and is still eager now, assuming what's pressing up against her thigh isn't another weapon. Snowman rocks her hips forward, and when Slick pauses, she shoves him off and knocks him down onto the floor. He hits the side of the tub and she stalks out of the bathroom. The last thing she should be doing is encouraging that asshole. She needs to find the certificate, and then she needs to decide if she wants to remember what happened so Slick can't hold it over her, or if she wants it all to stay forgotten.

Snowman steps over the body on her way out the door, heading for the exit. Slick's on her heels like a bad habit, tucking his shirt in and cramming his hat on his head. "Where the fuck are you going?"

"Someone had to marry us Slick. And being as it was already quite late before my memory turns into fog, I assume City Hall was already closed. So if we wanted to be married in the middle of the night, we likely went to the house of someone who could preform a legal ceremony and convinced them to marry us." She walks especially fast despite her headache, just to force Slick to jog to keep up with her. His short legs would never cease to be a source of amusement for her. "We simply need to find a list of marriage providers, and then visit them one by one until we find which person it was."

"They need to be alive for us to get that fucking annulment?" Slick asks, and she sees the flash of metal in his hands.

"Not at all," Snowman answers, and the deadly grin that splits his face open makes her feel a little too pleased. She has a flash of memory, of seeing that same smile on his face as he crawled across the bed to reach her, and she quickly puts it out of her mind. As they step into the hotel's foyer, the carapacian behind the desk ducks down, clearly cowering. It seems they noticed the missing bellboy. "Do try to keep up."

"Oh fuck you," Slick snaps back automatically as they step out into the bright light of day. They both stop dead, squinting and adjusting. Snowman's head hurts, and she still stinks of booze. Slick sneers and tugs his hat further down to shade his eyes.

It's easy to figure out where they came from. The remains of last night's madness is everywhere, blood and broken glass scattered over the ground. Shop windows have been boarded up, and near a florists' shop, torn roses lay on the ground. The jewellers where their rings were undoubtedly plundered from has a terrified looking Dersite lurking behind the broken window, unwilling to approach them for any reason. There's even a taxi with slashed tires and dried blood over the windows that the other cars keep driving around. Snowman faintly remembers making out with Slick on the hood of it, and from the momentary grin on Slick's face, apparently he does too.

Even City Hall didn't escape their drunken rampage through the city. City clerks flee as they enter, following a trail of glass and broken locks until they locate the records hall. One harried looking worker glances up from where he's kneeling on the floor, picking up piles of overturned papers. He's very polite, though he can't quite hide the undertone of resentment. "Mr Slick. Ms Snowman. May I help you?"

"Yeah, you can help but minding your own fucking business." Slick's itching for a fight. Snowman puts her arm out to keep him back, and from giving them extra work.

"We need the names and addresses of anyone who is able to preform legal marriage ceremonies." The clerk's eyes end up looking over at the ring on her finger, and Snowman quietly curses herself for not taking the damn thing off. She's not even sure why she left it on. Well... it is a nice ring, even if it is from Slick, and it's a sign of how much she was drinking that she thought this was a good idea. Snowman takes the pressure off of her and puts it back onto the clerk, snapping her fingers. "Now."

"Uh, yeah, one moment." The clerk gets to work, sorting through the piles of papers. Looks like he's going to be a while in this mess.

She sits down on a nearby desk, only to have Slick bare his teeth at her. Snowman lights a cigarette and fixes him with her own look. "What?"

"What do you think! You're sitting on a fucking desk when there are two perfectly good chairs right there! But no, you head straight over and sit your fucking ass down on the desk! Desks aren't supposed to be sat on, they're for fucking paperwork!" She's not expecting the explosion of anger from him, and she actually stops dead just to stare at him. Slick storms over to her, slamming his hands down on either side of her and leaning in. "But you just have to always be fucking special, don't you? What, are you too good to use a fucking chair like a normal carapacian?!"

"Yes," she snipes back automatically, just to watch his blood pressure rise, "In case you haven't noticed Jack, I'm on the tall side of things, and some chairs just aren't comfortable. Not all of us are so short that we fit in every chair we find."

"I was tall enough to sit in your throne," he hisses and Snowman finds herself rising to the bait. She grabs onto his collar and yanks him up, and his hands grab onto her hips-

"I found it." The clerk interrupts, and they both quickly let go of each other, Slick quickly taking a few steps back and Snowman getting to her feet. He holds out the paper to Snowman, who takes it without another words. She hears him mutter "you're welco-" before Slick sticks a knife in him and he screams.

"Slick, don't murder him. We may need him to file our annulment paperwork," Snowman chides him. Slick stabs the clerk again out of spite before catching up with her, wiping his knife on the leg of his pants. "That's disgusting."

"You're disgusting." As comebacks go, it's hardly inspiring. They manage to keep from killing each other as they make their way out of City Hall and head towards the first address on the list.

They zig-zag across town, following the wake of last night's destructive nuptials. Snowman has to admit that she's rather impressed with the violence and force at which they hit the town to presumably celebrate their bizarre marriage. Taxes are undoubtedly going to be raised, just to cover the aftermath of their one particular event.

Even Slick voices his admiration, in his own strange way. "Guess we really know how to uh- heh, to paint the town red."

"That was surprisingly clever for you." Snowman points out, and Slick just grins bigger, giving her that wicked smile of his that she likes far better than she should.

"What can I say, you just bring out the best in me," he takes a few steps, and quickly adds, "And by the best, I mean worst."

"Whatever you say Spades." She finishes her cigarette and grinds it under her heel, checking the address to make sure that they're going the right way. They are. The coinciding destruction seems to point straight to it as well. Perhaps they won't need to spend the rest of the day hiking all over town.

It finally comes to an end at a small house in the middle of an otherwise quiet looking neighbourhood. This is clearly the address they're looking for, as the front door is off its hinges and lying in the hall. The wood is broken where Slick’s shoulder undoubtedly slammed into the door repeatedly. The little sign beside the door indicates that this is the home of the Puisne Justice, just the sort of person who could issue a marriage certificate in the dead of the night when woken by two very drunk and very determined gangsters.

Inside, the place is a mess and Snowman carefully steps over broken crockery. She has no memory of breaking in here, but she knows her handiwork when she sees it, just as she knows Slick’s. While Slick storms around each corner like the Justice will still be there, Snowman heads straight for the bedroom at the end of the hall.

She’s not even a little surprised to see that the official's emptied her closet of clothes. There’s a few blood splotches on the carpet as well, making it clear she didn’t escape completely unscathed. The fool had probably tried to talk them out of getting married, forgetting that there was nothing that could dissuade either Snowman or Slick, especially while tanked. There was no chance she would wait around for them to return the next morning, hungover and furious.

“Where the fuck is she?” Slick storms into the room as if the Justice will be there, cowering just out of sight.

“Gone,” Snowman understands why she fled, but it doesn't make her sympathetic. That woman is the reason Snowman is now lawfully wed to her worst enemy. To say that she will pay for this is an understatement. Of course, this will require Snowman finding her, but she has all the time in the universe to do so.

"Fuck!" Slick kicks the women's bed, stomping back out of the room. The crash and clatter of things makes it clear that Slick's destroying whatever wasn't broken or smashed on their original invasion. Snowman exits as well, avoiding the living room, and looking instead for some sort of study. She finds it near the back of the house, the door partly open. Slick clearly hasn't been here, since this room is still intact.

Sitting on the neat desk are two pieces of paper. Snowman picks up the first once, glancing it over. It's an annulment, already signed and notarized. It's just waiting for the divorcing party's signatures and to be processed by the legal system. She promptly looks over the second one.

It's the marriage licence. Her signature is nearly unrecognizable, her usual careful cursive a sloppy mess. Slick's own handwriting looks much the same, as unreadable as ever. She folds both up and tucks them into her coat pocket. The next time it comes out, it'll be when she presents them to the judge at the annulment proceedings.

"Hey, let me see that," Slick's behind her in a second, reaching for what's in her pocket. She brushes his hand away, walking out of the room. "Hey! Give that to me!"

"No. I think it's best I hold onto it for the moment. You can't be trusted to keep it safe." She stays a few steps ahead of him, walking back through the house, glancing around to see if she can find evidence of where she may have gone. Perhaps a friend's place. She glances inside the bedroom and finds that Slick's made a mess of it. "Really now Slick. The worst you behave, the more difficulty I have believing that I willingly married you. There are limits to how drunk one woman can be before she agrees to do something."

"Fuck you, you're the one who started this bullshit!" He tries to grab the paper again, and this time, Snowman shoves Slick away from her as hard as she can. The bed's right there and he goes toppling over. Of course he's got a grip on her too and she's yanked after him. Snowman almost knees him in the groin and it's a real pity she missed. Slick keeps his hands tightened up in her coat, refusing to let her go. "I'm done playing this fucking game. Don't tell me you don't remember anything, because I know you do. So you tell me what the hell you did, or what I did, to get us in this mess."

"I don't remember anything-" She snaps at him, but stops when she realizes that yes, she does. The rest of the night is still lost in a blackout, but just on the edge of it, she can remember Slick. They'd run into each other in a bar and the usual fight had broken out. The bartender had begged them to take it outside, promising to cover their tab if they would just step out the door. It had ended up with them in the alleyway, her gun knocked down on the ground (and that's where it must still be) and Slick and her trying to draw blood.

She doesn't remember how it happened exactly, but she does remember that her cigarette holder was inches from his eye and his knife was pressed right up against her throat when he said it. It had been one of those moments when somebody says something so true that everything else just stops dead.

"Well?" He pulls her further down, until her face is uncomfortably close to his. This is not a conversation to have while straddling him. But since most of their 'conversations' went like this last night, it's a little late to be concerned.

"Nobody will ever love you as much as I hate you," She returns his words and his eyes go big as she jogs that part of his memory. Snowman brushes his now-loose hands off of her coat and pins them above his head, the ring on her finger brushing up against the ring on his. He'd been right; the depths of their hatred for one another wouldn't ever be matched by any other living creature, no matter the emotion. Considering how drunk they'd both been when that little revelation set in, it was almost no wonder that they'd finally decided to make their hate-union legal.

Slick tilts his head up, mouth already forming it's usual default sneer. It's all too easy to close the distance between them, to shove her mouth up against his. It's an awkward position, he tastes terribly, and she can feel the cool steel of one of his knives pressing against her hip. But if she's being honest, she wouldn't want it any other way. There's nobody who gets under her carapace like he does.

That doesn't mean she won't be getting that annulment the moment they're done here. But if they're going to go to court, they may as well earn it.


End file.
